


Housemate Discussions

by greenbucket



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 22:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13623285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbucket/pseuds/greenbucket
Summary: Ford holds in a sigh and just hopes it isn’t drugs.





	Housemate Discussions

**Author's Note:**

> For tumblr user uhhuuuuhthatsmyshit.

The first time it happens, Ford really doesn’t think much of it.

She’s just had to endure her first closing shift at work since moving and in her exhausted autopilot she’d got all the way to flashing her pass at the bus driver before she’d realised she was on the route back to her old apartment. Blurting some kind of apology and dodging cars, she’d sprinted to catch the right bus across the way just to have the doors shut in her face; it had been a twenty-minute wait for the next one in the dark and the cold with her phone on 13%. It sucked.

Ford kind of likes closing shift usually but after all that she just wants to get directly into her PJs, complete her bedtime routine to whatever bare minimum will keep her mortal form intact for tomorrow, and conk out for a good ten hours.

So when she gets through the door and hears a chair being knocked over and some quickly hushed yelling going on from the kitchen, she’s too tired and annoyed to be fazed. It’s probably not a disaster, anyway; it’s only been a few weeks, but she _had_ found this place on Craigslist. It was probably only a matter of time until some weirdness with her housemates emerged.

“Nothing to see here!” Shitty yelps as Ford shuffles over to the sink to fill her water bottle before bed, her brain shutting down bit by bit now she’s home and can afford for it to. She glances over: he’s buck ass naked on the kitchen chair with Lardo’s hands over his ears, both of them looking slightly twitchy and manic. There’s a pile of shredded fabric on the table and the chair she’d heard fall is still on its side.

Ford holds in a sigh and just hopes it isn’t drugs. The omnipresent smell of weed she can handle, but heavier shit is not what she signed up for and was not mentioned in the Craigslist ad or her viewing and will get her mom panicking down the phone and then driving all the way to pick her up like she’s a kid.

Plus to be honest, she really could have lived without seeing Shitty’s dick at any time, and especially in the room where she prepares food. She’ll just have to remember not to sit on that chair anymore and maybe have a word with Lardo. Maybe _I know you guys aren’t a thing at all but if you’re doing some kind of platonic and/or artistic and/or drug-related nakedness could you maybe do it in non-communal areas because that’d be pretty neat_? Ford’ll work on it.

For the time being, she just says, “Cool, whatever,” and goes to bed.

\---

The second time, Ford is making herself a well-earned lunch and looking over the stage direction changes she’d been forwarded on her phone when Shitty walks in, once again buck ass naked. He’s looking a little worse for wear – unshaven and bristly, hair like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards, mud smudged all over his legs even though they’re indoors. He’s digging around in his teeth with his untrimmed nails which is just _gross_.

Ford just looks at him. She’s maybe getting her disappointed stage manager look on. She’d _talked_ to both of him and Lardo, who is less of an offender but still an enabler: undies on in communal areas at least.

Shitty seems to shrink a little under her gaze. “I like to be naked?” he says by way of explanation, sounding unsure of even himself.

“I like to eat hygienically,” says Ford.

“You make a fair case,” concedes Shitty, and heads for the bathroom. A minute later Ford hears the shower turn on. She takes it as a win.

\---

The third time, Ford has Whiskey (aka Connor aka rude but actually all right guy from work) over to hang out, Lardo and Shitty doing their respective time filling in their own rooms. She thinks they might have deadlines, so she’s trying not to be too noisy. Her and Whiskey watching reruns of the summer’s lacrosse, which Whiskey loves and Ford can endure and thinks she might someday grow to like. In a few years or so.

Okay, so she hates it, but Whiskey is her friend and he makes some great commentary and she’s craving relaxed human contact. Mostly it’s her and Lardo in the apartment when it’s anyone at all, and Lardo is great but Ford isn’t sure Lardo likes her all that much – she’s not just quiet, she’s withdrawn, ever since that time Ford walked in on her and Shitty doing hard drugs or whatever.

Ford is working on it, because she doesn’t know how not to be liked, but for the time being she wants some non-complex people time. Even if that involves lacrosse.

Some kind of score thing happens and there’s some cheering and Shitty pokes his head out the door of his room.

“Do I hear sports?” he asks.

“Cannons vs. Lizards,” Whiskey says by way of explanation. This is news to Ford; she thought they were watching the Cannons vs. Rattlers match, so she keeps quiet.

Shitty squints at the TV screen. “Is that… lacrosse?”

Whiskey turns on the couch, usually blank face lighting up with interest. “Yeah, dude. You a fan?”

Shitty is holding himself very stiffly. Ford watches his moustache bristle and seem to expand with whatever he’s holding back. “More of a hockey kinda guy myself,” he says through his teeth.

“Oh, right,” Whiskey says, cautious. “Well, it’s lacrosse right now, but I’m good catching some hockey later if you want. Is that okay?”

Shitty nods, “Yep. Yup. All good,” and vanishes back into his room with the door slamming.

_Well_ , Ford thinks. Another housemate discussion seems on the cards, even though ‘no lacrosse’ seems like a far more unreasonable request than ‘no naked genitalia in the kitchen’. Whatever, the rent is cheap and Shitty and Lardo are really nice otherwise; she’ll stick it out.

Whiskey turns to Ford, eyes a little wide. “Why didn’t you say you live with a werewolf?”

Ford blinks at Shitty’s closed door. _Oh_.

\---

The thing is, Ford should’ve known.

It’s pretty clear now Whiskey’s pointed it out to her, and she’s a little embarrassed it took her this long in all honesty. Her grandma’s second husband had been a werewolf and he’d died when she was still little but Ford can remember some things: hairiness, shifting with emotional highs and lows, the ears and the teeth and the claws. Some full moon influence but nothing that uniform.

So the fourth time it happens – Ford coming back from the shops to Shitty awkwardly dropping the raw meat he was scarfing down moments earlier with a splat onto his plate, Lardo turning with her shoulders tense from where she’s making human-edible food at the stove – Ford decides to cut to the chase.

“It’s fine, Shitty. I know you’re a werewolf.”

Shitty and Lardo give each other a look that probably communicates a lot silently, because they’re in synch like that, and Ford waits. Lardo shrugs one shoulder and Shitty nods, seemingly satisfied. Ford lets out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding somewhere in her chest; it would’ve been really embarrassing to be wrong, and really horrible to move out when she’s come to like these guys and her room and the cheap rent, permanent weed smell and all.

“Fuck me, I’m glad that’s out in the open now,” Shitty says, picking up his raw meat chunk again and digging in. “Just for the record, though, I really do like to be naked. It’s healthy, bro.”

Ford moves over to the fridge to deposit her groceries. Lardo moves out of the way and gives Ford a small smile, the first since the apartment viewing way back when and definitely the first real one Lardo’s given her way, and Ford feels her heart soar with success.

But still. “We came to a house agreement, Shitty,” Ford says firmly. “No naked butts in the kitchen.”

Shitty gestures down to his clothed crotch. “It breaks my heart, but I respect and hear you.”

“I appreciate it,” Ford says, trying to jiggle open the jammed-shut crisper draw.

“We’re all chill, right?” Lardo asks after a minute of quiet. “Like, werewolfiness is gonna be okay?”

Ford says, “Of course,” because of course.

Lardo is focusing too hard on stirring her pot of pasta when she says, “Then it’s probably all right for you to know that I’m a mermaid.”

Ford considers this. “Okay.” And then, “Is that why the bath always has that ring of salt residue left on it?”

That gets another real Lardo smile. “Gotta mermaid-out sometime and the water’s fucking freezing outside. I’ll scrub it off extra hard in future.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ford says, and then to demonstrate she has all their dirty dishes washed and dried with a flick of her wrist. Her magic can do a lot more than that, but it’s emotion-charged and so usually safer to demonstrate outside or in a large theatre hall than a cramped kitchen in an apartment block with a werewolf and a mermaid and a witch in it.

A werewolf and a mermaid that are currently staring with eyes just as round as the freshly-cleaned dish plates. Shitty has dropped his meat chunk again. They look so astounded that Ford has to laugh, and then Shitty is talking a mile a minute about _what the motherfuck how did we not know Lards Jesus Christ what kind of housemates even are we_ and Lardo is real-smiling again, just a little, and Ford finally gets the crisper draw unstuck, and they’re gonna be all right.


End file.
